The Saga of Seven Suns: Veiled Alliances by Kevin J. Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

myself, but the trees, the forest . . . the worldforest is more than you see. It’s more than just alive. It is awake and aware, intelligent, full of experiences, anything that has ever happened on this planet. Memories from thousands of years, and from yesterday.”
    Roper looked up, his eyes shining. She stepped closer to him, not at all intimidated, and it was his turn to cringe away, but the two men continued to hold him. She was not afraid now—not of him, not of anything; she had no intention of running away. Her voice was calm, and she felt the strength of the worldforest inside her.
    “I know what Sam Roper tried to do to me.” She stared at him. He opened and closed his mouth, but no words came out. “But not just to me. Through the eyes of the forest I also saw what he did to his other victims. The trees saw. The trees remember.”
    “You’re lying! Look at her—she’s obviously contaminated somehow. She’s not thinking straight.”
    Thara ignored the man’s outburst and looked calmly at Norris Brovnik. “Roper has an uncontrollable temper. We’ve all seen that. But he also plans, and stalks, and kills—then manages to cover his tracks. I don’t think he understands the reasons himself.”
    “You have no proof!” Roper said.
    Thara turned her back on him and instead looked at the other villagers. “Over the years, we know that some colonists vanished into the forest. There are hazards here on Theroc, without question. Some did die from accidents or predators . . . and sometimes the predator was Sam Roper himself.” She paused. “I can show you where three bodies are hidden.” She turned to skewer him with her gaze. “I can even recite their last words just before he killed them.”
    Roper let out a laugh that sounded like an unoiled hinge. “Do you see how insane this is?”
    “The forest sees everything,” Thara said. “And it forgets nothing.”

    Though the skies were growing dark, she led the excavation team through the forest along paths only she could see. They carried illuminating globes, shovels and machetes, though they did not need to cut any branches out of their way. The forest cooperated with them.
    With his wrists bound behind him, Sam Roper stumbled along, dragging his feet, trying to slow down the progress.
    Thara guided the group unerringly to a small depression ringed by dead bushes. Roper suddenly looked pale in the harsh light of the illuminating globes.
    “Gina Chadhar and Antonia Steiner,” Thara said. “It was six months ago. They disappeared on the same day.” She stopped and pointed to the depression. “Dig there.”
    Some of the adults in the group gasped or moaned. Gina’s parents were among the party, and Antonia’s brother had come as well. Thara said nothing else, just stood in silent accusation as the men used their shovels to clear away the brush, the dirt. The light shone down into the depression.
    The diggers did not take long to find the bones. Two skulls, a pair of rib cages . . . two bodies dumped into the same shallow grave, and the lush forest growth had quickly erased all sign.
    Though Thara already knew every detail of what had happened, now she heard the sounds of grief, the sobs of lost hope, the angry curses. Sam Roper was sweating, but he made no comment.
    Norris Brovnik clenched and unclenched his fists. The muscles on his jaw rippled as he struggled to control himself. Even as Thara saw all the details of this tragic tableau, she was aware of the rest of the forest, the night insects, the giant birdlike moths that flew above the canopy, the twilight-blooming orchids.
    Brovnik looked at the exposed skeletons in the grave and whispered to Thara. “You said you knew of three victims? You’d better show us the other one.”
    When they dug up the third skeleton an hour’s walk from the first graves, no one was surprised that Thara was right. Roper accused Thara of killing the victims, hiding the bodies, and now was framing him, but nobody